"I enjoy being a redhead. As an artist I approve of it – it's a better colour": Audrey Niffenegger Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer

The compulsion when I'm writing has often been: "Let's kill them all!" I can make my characters' lives really quite miserable. I don't feel a duty to give hope or do the right thing, only to get inside the person's head and try to understand how horrendous some things might feel.

I haven't seen the film of The Time Traveler's Wifeand probably never will. I feel the direct opposite of curiosity, whatever that is. The theory is that if I don't see it, maybe I can believe it's brilliant. I was told that it veers into soppy territory, and that's the one thing I try to keep out of my work.

If you put in creativity, money, time, emotion, you're on your way to a functioning society or world. If you suck those things out, raise school fees, close down libraries, everything grinds to a halt – ideas, culture, jobs. There's nothing special about that.

Growing hurts. I say this as somebody who, in one school year, went from 5ft 2in to 5ft 8in. It was a hell of a spurt.

I have an incredible memory of visiting Highgate Cemetery in June. It was a bright day and it was green, it was lush, but it was quite broken. I fell in love with it, and wrote a book [Her Fearful Symmetry]. I would like to be buried there. I would have an epitaph reading: "Easily bored".

I over-research. Years go by. My publishers get annoyed. I don't like this feeling that everything has to be rushed.

The problem I have with party politics is: how many people really believe in the ideas they're shouting about? It's amazing what people will preach about for the sake of a career. The other day, several ex-Republican politicians came out in support of gay marriage. It's like they retire and you find out what they really think.

I generally expect things not to go very well. Occasionally people do lovely things and surprise me. It's better that way.

My desire to meet Aubrey Beardsley waxes and wanes. Sometimes I think I would rather preserve my ideas about his work, but I occasionally wonder what he would have thought about art post-Duchamp – things like the Armory Show and modernism.

I learned a lot from my first love. He was a Dutch scientist 17 years older than me and he exposed me to many things I didn't know about. I am seeing someone else now and I think I have got better at being patient in a relationship, letting things come along.

I enjoy being a redhead. As an artist I approve of it – it's a better colour.

Someone told me my work was defined by loss and I suppose I am interested by the fact that whether you're happy or traumatised, you're always going to move on. Your feelings will alter whether you want them to or not.

Audrey Niffenegger's new illustrated fairy tale, Raven Girl (£16.99, Cape), is being performed as a ballet at the Royal Opera House from 24 May to 8 June (roh.org.uk)